Lake Washington at 20,000 Feet

I'm flying down to Las Vegas. We left SeaTac about an hour ago (30 minutes later than scheduled), and I'm sitting on the right side of the plane. It was a clear day today, so I was able to watch the sunset out the window. We took off and banked over Lake Washington, and the low sunlight cast jagged tree shadows over the water. The reflection of the light to my seat in the plane was such that is seemed like the water had been etched by the many boats skimming across it. Then, as we traveled south, we flew over a wide bank of very thin cirrus clouds. From my angle, the setting sun was actually under the clouds, shining light through them. As we moved along the sunset's meniscus and over only slightly thicker clouds, the filtered yellow light grew orange and pink before turning into the warm red of a darkroom bulb. The horizon was a thin tan line that broke quickly into darkening blue gradient. Between the red and blue zones, the cirrus cloud became a darker and wider grey.

Funny to think that my great grandfathers never had a chance to see any of this.